


Distance

by nawsies



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Female Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, Friendship, Gen, Homesickness, Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst, Matt is Mentioned, No Plot/Plotless, Pidge misses her family, Platonic Cuddling, Platonic Female/Male Relationships, Sad without a happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-24
Updated: 2017-05-24
Packaged: 2018-11-04 06:37:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10985418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nawsies/pseuds/nawsies
Summary: Pidge misses her Mum so much and most of the time she refuses to think about it, Lance is in the right place at the right time and wants to help his friend (he helps).





	Distance

Every wooden spoon back home was stained with turmeric. Pidge’s mum had a thing about health foods, said that her geniuses had to keep their minds well-fed to stay sharp. Whenever Matt came home from the Garrison he'd roll his eyes and call it ‘healthy shit’. But he ate it with a smile as their mum ruffled his hair and she'd give all his sass back as good as she got. She’d send him back with bags of oranges she picked from the tree in the garden, organic of course, and an assortment of supplements because ‘those Garrison high-ups don’t understand what nutrition a growing boy needs’; never mind that Matt was already 20 and the Garrison had professional nutritionists constantly analysing their diets. What could a nutritionist know that their mother didn’t?

Pidge fumbled with her pliers and cut the wrong wire. “Shit,” she muttered. She blinked away the mist in her eyes as she tried to work out a solution. Rover mark two had to be a perfect unhackable machine. She never made the same mistake twice.

Whenever Pidge had a problem, she'd go to her mum. She was the best. Her mum wasn’t a tech-whiz like her dad, but she'd sat by his side enough when he was stuck to know the right questions to guide him in a new direction. Often all it took was a new perspective, and her mum was full of them.

“Hey Pidgeotto,” said Lance as he collapsed on the pile of pillows next to her and rested his chin on her shoulder. “Whatcha working on?”

“Rover,” said Pidge, “well, Rover but new and improved and not Galra.”

“This one’s not going to blow me up right?” Lance teased. Pidge didn’t look down but she could hear the wink in Lance’s voice. She jostled the shoulder he was leaning against and he made a startled noise in protest.

“Don’t make jokes like that,” Pidge said while Lance got himself comfy leaning against her again.

“Sorry, coping mechanisms and all that.” Lance shrugged. “Got to find some way to get through.”

 Pidge took a deep breath. “Tell me about it.”

“What’s got you down lil buddy?”

“My mum,” Pidge admitted. There was no point beating around the bush when Lance was on the warpath, or maybe the ‘love and care path’ would be more accurate. He’d wear her down with patience and empathy and if that didn’t work out he’d go and find Hunk, and she could never lie to Hunk. They both took their role as her honorary big brothers seriously and refused to let her wallow and spiral. Which was hypocritical of Lance, but she wasn’t going to open that can of worms.

“Ah,” Lance sighed, it was long and heavy and she could feel his whole body rise and fall with the action. He lifted himself off her and shuffled round so he could face her over the pile of metal, wires and tools on the small table before her. He folded his legs and placed his elbow on his knee and head in his hand. “Want to talk about it or is this a suffer in silence with company kind of sadness?”

Pidge wasn’t sure. She put down her pliers and took her glasses off. She cleaned them with the hem of her shirt with slow methodical circles as she tried to capture fragments of thoughts. Sometimes talking about things helped, like thinking through a problem out loud and finding new solutions as she went. Other times it made everything worse. Sometimes when she tried to talk about feelings, it would all get tangled and messy and she’d fumble her words and make them bigger and scarier than she thought they were. She'd find new hurts that she hadn’t wanted to look too closely at, and it would all snowball until it was all overwhelming and she didn’t know where to begin to unravel it. Abstract physics concepts were easy for her to understand and communicate, feelings were harder.

But, Pidge thought to herself, this was _Lance_. If anyone understood homesickness and missing their mum it was him, and he also understood her better than she gave him credit for. She put her glasses back on and a small smile tugged at her lips as Rover came into focus again, the solution to that particular problem came to her and she set to work.

“I feel close to my Dad when I’m working,” Pidge admitted, she fell silent again as she rifled through her toolkit looking for the right size screwdriver, or whatever it was Coran had called it. It did the same task at least. “It was our bonding thing. Mum says that he panicked about having a daughter because he didn’t know what we’d have in common. Turns out Dad never had to worry about that, but Mum did.”

Pidge lost her train of thought and kept working silently for a bit. She was glad that Lance didn’t push her for more. He was still quiet, bouncing a knee steadily but otherwise as still as placid water. She could see her own grief reflected back in him.

“I look like Mum, Matt and I both do. And everyone in my family gets a bit…obsessive,” Pidge wondered if that was the right word to use but after a pause kept going regardless, “about stuff. Matt, Dad and I, all our interests’ kind of align but, Mum’s kind of, um, she’s not really into science. She’s still really smart! Oh man, Mum can kick all our asses at trivia things, games like Cranium are her jam.”

Pidge smiled to herself, family trivia competitions were the best, it would be her and her Dad against Matt and Mum. She would always moan about how unfair it was but her Dad would give her a high-five and tell her that this time they had it for sure. They never had it but they always had so much fun; he’d make bad puns when he couldn’t remember the real answer, or he’d sing love songs to her Mum to try distract her (it never worked). It would usually morph into some other game by the end, one without rules and thus without cheating and it would be chaos. Pidge loved family trivia nights.

“Mum’s thing was always self-help books, health guides and gardening,” Pidge laughed, she was smiling so wide her cheeks hurt. “As you know I am _not_ an outdoor person, I get sunburnt in five minutes and every plant becomes poisonous the second it sees me. But, mum planted a whole section of the garden with purple flowers because it’s my favourite colour and she was trying so hard to get me interested so that we’d have our own thing.

 “Out here, it’s easy to feel close to Dad and Matt and I know in my heart they’re OK, and that I’ll find them and I’ve got physics and tech and space and those are the things that connected us, I do this and I feel close to them.” Pidge paused, tears welling in her eyes again against her permission and to her shame she found her lower lip wobbling as she took in a shaky breath. “I miss my mum so much. I have nothing of her here. I have no gardens or turmeric and when we go out she’s not there to tell me to be good and safe and to look after myself, and she can’t braid my hair, or put bouquets of purple flowers in my room, and I can’t remember what her laugh sounds like, and I can’t hug her, and I can’t tell her about all these adventures and introduce her to you guys. I haven’t seen her in _so long._ I just, I miss my mummy.”

Pidge broke down. She threw Rover down and dove over the pile of tech into Lance’s arms, she smooshed her face into his chest and wrapped her arms round him. His own arms came around her, one hand rubbing soothing patterns on her back and the other just holding her tight. He was saying something but she couldn’t hear him over her own sobs and the blood rushing in her ears. She didn’t think his words really mattered, it was the emotion behind them. It was Lance telling her it would be OK and Lance had a way of making people believe anything he said.

“We’ll get your family,” Lance said with the kind of battle focus conviction he had when laying out tactics, “and we’ll get back home, and your mum is going to waste all of you at trivia. We'll get back home Pidgey. We have to.”

**Author's Note:**

> I am 21 years old and I miss my mum so hecking much, I see her four times a year and it sucks. So I can't imagine how much it sucks for Pidge, being so young, in space, with no way to get in touch with her Mum, and so I projected on my lil green fave. 
> 
> my [tumblr](http://dreamsofbooksandmonsters.tumblr.com/)  
> Comments and Kudos are much appreciated, they make me feel as warm and wonderful as one of Lance's hugs would.


End file.
